Carthik Sharma

I don’t know if the people that used to read my blog read it anymore. There were many that I turned away by not writing regularly (or at all for a while), and by switching the URL for my feed. All capital sins.

So if you do read this blog, and think that you are one of the people I think read this blog, leave me a comment.

Or better still, take a look at this iBook for sale. If you need an iBook G4 that works, this is the one for you. It works, flawlessly and has been lovingly taken care of by someone who loves me.

Update: If you are a friend/foe staying in Bangalore, and would like to talk, or meet, mail me your phone number at mail you-know-what-goes-here carthik.net and I will call you.

It’s been a week since I landed in India now. My plans for taking lots of photographs fell flat on it’s face since the battery charger does not work on 220 V/50 Hz. So the camera is out of power for now. I will fix this soon.

So I arrived in a terribly silent Bombay airport at 3 AM on the 3rd of July. I said “thank you” to the customs clerk, who stared at me for one terribly long second. That screamed “Welcome home” more than anything else. No “thank you”s or “sorry”s in my land. The shuttle that took me from the international airport to the domestic airport travelled under the nose of the plane I just landed in, through the runways – very exciting.

I had a long 9 hour wait at the airport, so me an my friend headed out. I decided to risk it all and had a dosa and a tea at a dinghy looking restaurant. My tummy is not the same as it was in the US, but I am up and about and everything is fine. The dust, smoke and pollution affects my nose, but then again, I am okay, so everything’s good.

I attended my friend’s wedding, and then another, and had two heavy meals after what seems like an eternity. Grandma, my father and everyone else are fine. It is amazing to see how the old change, and so fast, while the young – folks my age – do not change. I would have expected it to be the other way round.

I left with my father for Guruvayoor, Trichur, and now I am in Bangalore, alone, at my sister’s place. My nephew is active, and lively, and talkative, and quite a trip. The candies and GI Joes survived the long trip from Walmart to Bangalore remarkably well.

Yesterday I met Siddharth after three years. He was once my roommate and is a good friend. He looks a little thinner, and is quite the same.

I browse in fits and starts at browsing centers. Thankfully, due to the dollar – rupee conversion rate, I don’t feel the pinch here, though things are a lot more expensive.

All my friends and relatives go to work during the day, so I have nowhere to go right now, and dial up internet is too slow.

Lots of time for introspection, and speculation.

I find myself remembering a lot of old friends today. Heightened demands at work/research seem to make my mind so much more unpredictable, and all sorts of interesting thoughts, quotes and people pop up more frequently than otherwise.

So how do you decide who is a good friend of yours, someone you can count on? According to one, very highly trusted friend of mine, it is really simple — keep track of people you see in your dreams. Seeing a friend in a dream is a reasonably rare occurence, and should help you find out who you subconsciously trust, and love. Someday, when I have the time, I will make a list of friends I have seen in dreams. And yes, I see some people in dreams that I have never seen in real life. Am I alone in this? – I would think not.

Another wise friend introduced me to the concept of circles of relationships, with you anointing friends to a circle of people whose opinion really matters to you. Anything said by anyone outside the circle should then have no influence about how you judge yourself, and does not, in effect, form part of the feedback loop that we all need to live in this world.

There is another related thought I had when I walked in the rain towards the department building. I remember the circumstances, what the thought was about (about something “automatic” and how it is remarkable that when “a” is “missing”, things automatically roll back to “b”, or some such), and who I was thinking of when that thought occured. I can’t remember the thought, and I feel sad, since I cannot share it with you. Strangely enough, I am also afraid I might have thought a neat thought forever — do you ever get this feeling? In the normal scheme of things, come tomorrow, the thought, and the memory of it, will be history, and I won’t know what I lost, or that I lost it. This post, though should remind me that I had this thought, with the words in quotes I mentioned above, and maybe, tomorrow, when I read this, I will remember it again.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Please welcome Sumant – the man with the biggest heart in the world. Sumant was my roommate before he outgrew his Masters and found a job. I wait for updates to his blog, anxiously.